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Coyne copies Smith ‘strategy’ to win Unite. 4 more days to join and help stop him

Details of a ‘strategy’ document showing Gerard Coyne’s plan to try to defeat Len McCluskey for the Unite leadership have been revealed today by The Independent.

The so-called strategy – a combination of smears, smallmindedness and the fantasy of building “a new network of activists and members” to appeal to a hidden bulk of presumed anti-McCluskey members – is uncannily reminiscent of the tactics used by Owen Smith’s campaign in the summer’s Labour leadership battle. Odd, eh? No wonder he’s supported by Labour First and Progress.

Coyne: turning his back on the wider interests of his members, their families and society

In stark contrast to the cynical tactics outlined in the Coyne document, an actual Labour activist know on social media as ‘The Awakened’ has published a plain-speaking and down-to-earth appeal to Unite members that lays out exactly why Coyne must not be allowed to succeed:

This writer, a longstanding member of Unite, will certainly not consider voting for anyone but Len McCluskey and recommends all members do the same.

And if you’re not a member, you have 4 days – including today – to join and still qualify to vote. For as little as £2 (‘Community’ membership for the unemployed), you can have your say and make sure that Unite retains a leader who understands the big picture and will work for the benefit of his members in the widest sense. Please go here to do so.

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Coyne’s “campaign” is playing out pretty much as I expected. A smear-fest based on the highly scientific assumption that McCluskey’s vote will remain the same as in 2013. There’s a distinct lack of surpise about this development, given that Coyne is not offering anything more to Unite members than the (all too likely mis-) managed decline of his own union. That’s his position, full stop. As this blog has stressed, Coyne’s pitch is insular and lacks anything that might come within a continent or so of actual passion about the issues facing Unite members and how to address them.

You certainly don’t begin to address a thirty year long squeeze on real wages, rampant employer bullying and an increasingly well established culture of hyper-exploitation by leaving Labour politics in the hands of Watson and McNichol. The pro-Coyne strategy paper makes smearing noises about McCluskey and the “mis-use” of Unite funds. However, I find it disturbing that Coyne and his supporters/masters believe that paying substantial affliation fees to the Labour Party while not taking any active interest what policies the party pursues – and how these are instrinscially linked to the issue of who leads the party – is in someway a sensible and proper use of members’ subscriptions. This is advocating what is nothing less than a wilful misuse of Unite funds. I hope I’m not alone in not regarding this to be a slightly mediocre selling point.

Even non-affliated unions such as PCS and RMT maintain parliamentary groups to pursue legislative changes: it is gross stupidity for any would be General Secretary to seek to in anyway undermine the politcal clout of his or her union. Every aspect of employment is framed by legislation from rights in relation to pay through to rights when facing redundancy. The Coalition Government weakened union/workers consultation right over redundancy and, of course, put fees in place for taking a case to an Employment Tribunal, so pay rights and all others have been heavily undermined.

The only way to address these blatant attacks on workers’ rights is through leglisaltion; that is through politics, and for Unite this requires taking an active interest in what the Labour Party does and who’s doing it – not just forking over the cash and clinging to the fantasy of not being done over not quite so hard when the pigs are scrambling for take off and a Blairite Labour party somehow manages to stagger back into government.